Chief among them was India's happy hooker Mohinder Amarnath, recalled after a long exile in the Lancashire leagues with Lowerhouse and Crompton, who took them on with, initially, only a solar topee to protect himself.

It was on all fours, like a hound on a scent, that I was compelled to travel; my solar topee getting the worse for wear every minute; my skin getting more and more wounded; my clothes at each step becoming more and more tattered.

As I watched, he finished his business and strode off towards the town — a jaunty, tragic little figure, cheated out of his patrimony by his partner, battened on by an obviously worthless son, deserted by his wife, an irrepressible, bewildered figure striding off under his bobbing topee, cheerfully butting his way into a whole continent of rapacious and ruthless jolly good fellows.